Amazon Fruit: to taste the typical cuisine of Pará | Florianópolis

I was excited to find a diner / restaurant selling paraense food in downtown Floripa, because it's a cuisine that I had very little contact to date. Amazon Fruit is on September 7th Street, next to Lojas Americanas.

The specialty is açaí direct from Pará, as well as typical fruit juices and paraense lunch. I went to taste the lunch and also the crab nail (R $ 5).

The nail (affectionately called by the paraenses), resembles a drumstick. The stuffing is made with the fleshy part of the crab's leg and the dough is also different in texture and flavor with crab stock and mashed potatoes.

From the "drumstick" beak comes a crab leg, which is where we take it to bite.

To drink, I tried the cajá juice (R $ 6), also known as taperebá and it was love at first sip. Cajá is a typical North and Northeast fruit and belongs to the same botanical family as cashew. I felt a slightly acidic refreshing taste with a sweet touch that reminded me of cashews, but without that tongue-locking sensation.

For lunch, they serve Pará dishes that vary according to the day of the week. First, I tasted vatapá (R $ 19), a full-bodied shrimp cream accompanied by white rice. For those who like spicy, you can put pepper sauce with tucupi.

We can add cassava flour with soybean, a kind of coarser flour that is also sold there and adds a crunchy texture to the dishes. There are also Bragança and tapioca flours.

We arrived at tacacá (R $ 20), my biggest curiosity. The dish is a broth made with tucupi, dried shrimp, tapioca gum and jambu. Jambu is a typical Pará plant known for bringing different sensations to the mouth, such as numbness and tingling.

It is taken by taking the cumbuca directly to the mouth. The first flavor was that of tucupi, a stronger citrus than lemon. Then the shrimp, which was too salty for my taste buds. The jambu was the surprise of the dish; I was chewing the leaves, hoping to feel some different sensation that only came to an end: intense tingling throughout the mouth at the beginning of the throat. It's interesting, a totally different experience.